How to Prepare for Four More Years of Barack Obama

The feelings of apathy I expressed in the above-linked article resonated with quite a few folks. Where I expected hate mail, I received lots of love. The idea that voting, particularly in a presidential election, is, by and large, a useless and symbolic act hit home with more people than I thought.

Frankly, it sucks to classify voting as such, but it is what it is.

For a brief period of time, I was set to vote for Mitt Romney. Then he named Paul Ryan his running mate. Then, Romney went on his little riff about the 47%. I can't vote for somebody like that and still sleep at night.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no Obama fan. I refuse to vote for "the lesser of two evils," but I have succumbed to the fact that that's exactly what he is.

An Obama presidency doesn't bode well for you if you make a lot of money, have income-producing investments, have investments you want to sell and/or are self-employed. I'm not looking forward to paying more in taxes for a healthcare program full of compromises and other assorted empty promises.

It's not like I'm anti-Romney and pro-Obama. I'm blah to both of them.

Despite my election-related apathy, I have been thinking a lot about what the market might do down the 2012 stretch, particularly once we have a winner. At this point, there's no question in my mind the winner will be Obama.

He's in the most excellent position, just six weeks out, to sit back in a zone defense. Don't make any mistakes. Answer every question the same way at every debate -- reminding the audience that Mitt Romney only really wants to govern half of the nation. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Lots of people fear an Obama victory, at least with respect to its impact on the stock market.

For a second, I did. But then I woke up.

I know better. You do as well. It's just difficult to fight off the media. They need a story. Without one, most talking heads, pundits and scribes aren't creative enough to entertain an audience.

So, they go negative and try to scare you into thinking that what they're selling matters.

The fiscal cliff gets hyped nearly as much as Y2K. The Federal Reserve becomes the most evil entity in the world. And the stock market, simply because it keeps going up, is a house of cards set to implode and take your kid's college education and retirement with it. Social media -- it's a bubble. Amazon.com ( AMZN) has somehow been successful for 13 years despite having a reckless spender at the helm.

Right, we didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning.

In other words, there will always be crisis. In fact, we live in a state of perpetual crisis. It's always been that way, as Billy told us, but there's no question that 9/11 helped amplify that dynamic.

For me, this means when Barack Obama wins the election, most investors shouldn't do a thing. If Obama somehow manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and Romney wins, move your female children to Canada, but don't change much in your investment portfolio.

Never-ending crisis is basically white noise. And one thing smart investors refuse to do is sell on noise. No, you load up. Buy when others are fearful.

It will be fitting for a country with such an absurd system for selecting a President -- Obama will win, the Republicans will own Congress. We'll have four more years of gridlock.

The stock market might blink from time to time, but, over the long-term, no matter what happens in Washington, it won't bust.

At the time of publication the author held no positions in any of the stocks mentioned.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage.

Rocco Pendola is a private investor with nearly 20 years experience in various forms of media, ranging from radio to print. His work has appeared in academic journals as well as dozens of online and offline publications. He uses his broad experience to help inform his coverage of the stock market, primarily in the technology, Internet and new media spaces. He has taken a long-term approach to investing, focusing on dividend-paying stocks, since he opened his first account as a teenager. Pendola, 37, is based in Santa Monica, Calif., where he lives with his wife and child.